How can I reset my terminal in a GNU screen session after accidentally printing binary garbage?

Question

Sometimes I accidentally print binary garbage on the screen, for example I have printed a binary hash value or nonce instead of the hex hash value.

Sometimes the terminal is messed up in various ways after this, because the binary data contained escape sequences which reconfigure the terminal, rendering it almost useless.

When in a normal shell (locally or via ssh) it is usually sufficient to blindly type reset and press enter. (Often the typing is not visible due to the messed up terminal configuration.)

But when in a shell which is inside a GNU screen session this is sometimes not sufficient and the shell is still unresponsive.

How can I revive my terminal without destroying it and re-creating it?

Answer 1

The GNU screen terminals maintain part of the terminal state, too. To reset that in GNU screen do:

• Press Ctrl-A.
• Enter :reset and press enter.

Done. You may also need to enter reset in the terminal itself as well as usual.